Is it still a road to nowhere?

What is it about crackpot schemes that gets county and local councillors plus the support groups so excited?

First, it was five minutes off the train journey to London by HS train in 10 years time.

BRAG hasn’t considered that we probably won’t have trains, of any sort, by then!

Now we have ecstasy from councillors over the finally opened ‘link’ road!

Tell me what it links?

A point on the A259 level with the centre of Bexhill, to another loop road West of St Leonards and Hastings.

On it’s own this ‘link’ is a waste of time.

It was intended to be Bexhill’s ‘link’ to the proper bypass which was to skirt both Bexhill and Hastings.

As such it would have been useful. As it is ...it’s not!

Councillor Glazier said, ‘It was not just about relieving traffic on the A259’!

That’s obvious, because the worst traffic gridlock takes place west of this road on the A259 at Little Common.

Destined to become a nightmare when the Barnhorne Green development’s traffic exits out onto it as well.

All due to the same planners totally ignoring any thought of a more sensible way out.

Lets return to Cllr Glazier, ‘It’s about opening the land for new homes and creating new jobs’.

Well spoken and shows empathy with the main two concerns of local people.

However the intention is more mercenary. It’s expected to bring in £1bn of investment, 2,000 new homes, 3,000 new jobs and a lot of business space.

Think about this and your new link to .. well .. the east!

Once this road gets better known and becomes used, it will not be quite the shoot through it is at present.

Now go one step further and think about the sort of heavy lorries, that will be trundling along it to build these houses and industrial units, etc.

The trip to The Ridge may not be quite as fast, and with the increase of traffic, an accident could cause untold delays because again some short-sighted planner didn’t think a dual carriageway was necessary!

Let’s now consider LRDO day, ‘Link Road Development Open’ day.

We now have 2,000 people, assuming only one in each house has a car, and all the associated traffic for a large busy industrial estate.

All will be entering and exiting via the vastly overworked and gridlocked link road to Bexhill or the...east!

What will you do? Go back to using the old route on the A259!

There is only one sensible solution. Stop wasting all this money on pavements and roads to nowhere. If contractors want to develop along new roads make them help build the bypass and not just bits to suit their own purposes.

I notice that the new road maintenance contract has just gone to Costain CH2M but in smaller print that a new county council management structure was to be put in place.

I sincerely hope this isn’t just another excuse for more managers on six-figure salaries that could have been spent on a bypass.

I know it’s been said before, the original intention was a trunk route along the South Coast, Honniton in Devon to Folkestone and the Channel Tunnel.

John Prescott killed it at the last minute.

But this didn’t stop all the other counties involved doing their best to achieve it.

Drive up from the West Country and you are on major dual carriageway roads all the way bypassing Bournemouth, Portsmouth, Southampton, Brighton.

Then you hit East Sussex and everything returns to a countryside meander with the odd bit of straight, lethal, single carriageway. Kent has to an extent built decent trunk routes but as there was no indication as to where anything would hit the border from Sussex it remained untouched!

Do you think the powers that be could for once stop thinking about what might benefit them and consider what is best for the people who vote for them to represent us?

The ‘link’ road is a white elephant which will be made extinct by the poachers and their vehicles from London and the EU.

We shall see how long it is before we see some of the enthusiasts become the doubters and start baling out!

Michael Crotty

Shepherds Close

Little Common

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